Posted
by
timothy
on Sunday May 19, 2013 @08:05PM
from the tell-me-again-why-you-hate-all-that-is-good dept.

cold fjord writes "A healthcare provider has sued the Internal Revenue Service and 15 of its agents, charging they wrongfully seized 60 million medical records from 10 million Americans ... [The unnamed company alleges] the agency violated the Fourth Amendment in 2011, when agents executed a search warrant for financial data on one employee – and that led to the seizure of information on 10 million, including state judges. The search warrant did not specify that the IRS could take medical information, UPI said. And information technology officials warned the IRS about the potential to violate medical privacy laws before agents executed the warrant, the complaint said."Also at Nextgov.com.

Where in the legislation does it say they could seize the 60 million records they are accused of taking, "despite knowing that these medical records were not within the scope of the warrant?"
Where in the legislation does it say they can target specific political affiliations to deny/delay tax exempt status or use special scrutiny as a bullying tactic?

Sec. 1502-IN GENERAL.-Part III of subchapter A of chapter 61 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 is amended by inserting after subpart c the following new subpart:SEC. 6055. REPORTING OF HEALTH INSURANCE COVERAGE(b) FORM AND MANNER OF RETURN(1)(B) (iv) such other information as the Secretary may require

Where 'Secretary' refers to the Secretary of the Treasury. This section describes what is to be reported to the IRS. Sections (i) through (iii) specify name, address, tax id number and policy information. Section (iv) is completely open ended.

I believe part of the law states that insurance companies must spend a minimum of 80% of premiums on actual health care.
How would the IRS, or whatever body is supposed to police that part of the law, verify what is ACTUALLY being spent on that, versus what the insurance companies are CLAIMING they spend?
If seizing medical records en-masse was their solution, perhaps a better method might be needed. Still, that might be what is going on here.

This was not about the 80% spending rule. This was about the financial data on one individual, that just happened to be an employee at this company. If he worked at McDonalds, they'd have been pulling records on 60 million hamburgers.

By that logic, anyone who's "bound by an oath of silence" should have access to all of our personal data. What if 20% of the populace was bound by such oaths? Just because they can't talk about it doesn't mean they should know your business.

You missed the joke. Last I've read, IRS regulations are added at a rate greater than a human can read. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, even when the law is unknowable. So go read the the laws and let us know which one causes the problem. By the time you finish reading it, you'll be dead, and have violated many of them before you managed to read them (or interpreted them differently than some random judge)

If you weren't making it up, you could link to the exact part of the law.

That is an unreasonably high standard. I think murder is illegal but I can't link the "exact part of the law". Actually having tried to read the law on a few matters, without a law degree I doubt you can even identify what the "exact part" is. In part because laws are written in extremely technical language and in part because most laws, at least the ones I have looked at, are basically a bit of new verbiage with some statements like "change code section whatever to read X". Most non-lawyers are totally dependent upon lawyers to tell us what the law really is. Another reason it is often difficult to find a piece of the law is congress has become prone to writing laws that instead of saying specifics will actually say Agency X will regulate Y to achieve Z. So the details you are looking for aren't in the law at all they are contained in administrative regulation that may or may not have been written yet.

In this case I do not know whether they will get access to our medical records. What has been widely reported in the media is that you will have to prove compliance with the affordable care act. The IRS has been charged with enforcement and will be collecting "enforcement related data". Which will likely be at least medically related. It isn't clear to me just how far that goes. If I was a betting man I'd say that the IRS has not determined what will be collected yet. Whatever they are collecting there is going to be a lot of it because they have requested 16,000 additional workers specifically for this purpose.

When you make an extraordinary claim, you need to be able to back it up. Someone claimed that the Affordable Care Act gave the IRS full access to our medical records. He was asked for proof. They replied "if you read it you'd know". That reply means one of two things- they read it already and know where it states this, or they've never read it and are trying to get out from under the burden of proof. I asked where it was in order to figure out which it was. Based on the lack of response, its the seco

Nancy said we had to "pass it to find out what was in it". When you are a jillionaire insider trader, like her, you don't care what it says. You can buy your own hospital if you don't like ObamaCare.

That's because the House and Senate were each debating and amending the bill(s) simultaneously, IIRC. This was done on both sides to speed up the process I guess. If either one or both passed it would go to the other side and a joint committee work out something both sides agree to, and since it was so big, there was a lot of room for differences between what they pass and what the committee pooped out. I'm pretty sure that's what she meant.

They're just getting a head start on Obamacare - which they will be administering.

Would that be like the IRS targeting conservative, jewish and non-supporting AGW groups. I'm sure it was all fine, nothing like, to ensure that the "right message" is being presented by stifling dissenting views. Or seizing AP phone records, or going after commentators that are critical of Obama and Obamacare?

After all those years of the current anti-Obama crowd desperately defending the shamefully illegal shenanigans of GWB's administration, I just don't quite know how to react to seeing them implode over this Obama-related stuff.

Why couldn't you get this angry at Bush Corp when it was doing similar or worse stuff? Why did you try so hard to dismiss any criticism of the unlawful (and almost always far worse) behavior of people such as GWB, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, et al?

I'm not suggesting it is wrong for you to be critical of current events, because we should all be crying foul. But it would be nice if you objected when everyone does it, and not just when it's the other team.

Why couldn't you get this angry at Bush Corp when it was doing similar or worse stuff

Can you point the rest of the world to where Bush n' Co, were doing the same deal as Nixon. That's right you can't. Though Obama and Co were, and are. While attempting to claim that "it's someone below me, I know nothing." Perhaps it was Sgt. Shultz that is really in charge of the whitehouse...one can't be too sure.

Nixon was a crook, yes. But he was also a smart, effective, and sometimes courageous politician. He was not afraid to spend a lot of the political capital he'd accumulated during his Red-baiting days by going to China and meeting Mao.

That took balls, something which neither of the Bushies ever had in the first place.

It certainly appears that the Obama administration went after political opponents with the IRS. Can you point out when the Bush administration did that with either the IRS or FBI against political opponents? I don't recall that happening.

You may recall the Obama administration going after Fox News repeatedly. What comparable thing happened under the Bush administration? I don't recall that happening.

Nixon was actually right about the war in Vietnam, and extracted the US from it. There isn't much doubt that the US was correct about going to war in Afghanistan, and all of the causes of action against Iraq were correct (banned long range missiles, obstruction, crimes against humanity, etc.) except the active WMD programs. The WMD programs were in stasis, just waiting for Saddam to complete his breakout of sanctions using the Oil for Food money to bribe UN members and politicians around the world. If Iraq was able to break out of the sanctions regime, there is no doubt those WMD programs would restart. Oh, and don't forget, Saddam had the government mime as if they still had WMD material to fool the Iranians. He didn't think the West in general, and the US specifically, would act. He guessed wrong.

Since the IRS under the Obama administration was asking extremely intrusive questions of conservative political groups, and then forwarding that information to liberal groups, I guess that counts as spying too. You think the Bush administration did that? Not so much.

Other than working in the White House, I don't recall that either Cheney or Rumsfeld were ever implicated in any part of the Watergate scandal. So unless you have something, you have nothing as the basis for a smear.

I don't think you nailed this one other than successfully identifying where two people worked for a short period.

The IRS went after the political opponents on legit tax grounds. Any time a type of tax shelter becomes a fad they lock things down.

Look here: http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/501c4-vs-501c3-vs-527/

A 501c4 is not a "charitable organization" it's a political party-lite organization. It has a very arrow acceptable focus versus using a 527 for your organization. With a bunch of groups all got bad tax instructions from the Internet, or somebody DELIBERATELY put those groups to filing in the wrong categories. Gi

Sorry, but there is no "there," there. US Attorneys are political appointees that serve at the pleasure of the President. Normally practically all of them, if not all of them, are replaced when a new administration comes in to office, especially from a different party. As I recall the standard is that they offer their resignation, and it is normally accepted. If that is all you have to hang your hat on, that is pretty weak tea indeed. And they weren't spied upon inappropriately, just fired, as was admi

The issue is in the title of your second link. You can fire all US Attorneys, and no one blinks an eye, because they are political appointees. However, if you fire 8, the assumption is that they have been selected. Couple that with the fact that the fired attorneys were a thorn in the side of republicans, and now you need to explain why singling out 8 AGs is NOT a political decision.

Let me google that for you.
Nope, Richard Armitage was a long time Republican who, prior to being given a job by newly elected President Reagan was an aide to Republican Senator Bob Dole. In the interests of denying Republicans another chance to rewrite history, I had to contradict your - possibly unintentional - misinformation.

Here's what I thought the story was:- Obama avoided going to Vietnam, just like those cowardly Democrats John Kerry and Al Gore.- He moved from where he was born in Kenya to Indonesia to study how to become a secret Muslim terrorist.- At the tender age of 6 years old, he helped Bill Ayers bomb the Pentagon.- As soon as he got back to the US, he started doggedly following Jeremiah Wright's hatred of America, but remained somehow a secret Muslim.- All policies Obama has ever made as president have been about trying to take away everyone's guns.- In 2012, he had the gall to not show up to a debate with Clint Eastwood.

I could go on, but these are the kinds of things a significant portion of the US says they believe about him. (And, for the record, absolutely none of them are true)

A 3rd party will never work with the electoral college or a popular vote. either the 3rd party will fail and voters will turn their attention to one of the candidates who is closer to their ideals and vote for them, ending the 3rd party, or the 3rd party will become popular and one of the other parties will disappear as their voters flock to the 3rd party. A one vote system with a directly (or nearly directly) elected executive will always turn into a two horse race. Hell even in parliamentary systems where

I'm not sure how this piece of crap got modded "Insightful" The 47% of people paying no taxes is complete crap. Its true that 47% of people don't pay one particular form of tax but most of them pay a bigger percentage of their income in taxes then Mitt Romney does.

If only someone in Congress had tried to submit a law shielding the media from that sort of information seizure. Oh, right. Never mind, the Free Flow of Information Act was of course filibustered by Republicans in the Senate in 2008 with strong opposition by George Bush and died a nasty death. Because of course the Republicans wanted the executive branch to have this very ability.

The IRS is the one that is charged with ensuring that everyone has insurance, not with keeping and maintaining medical records.

Lets use the ever popular car analogy. The Department of Motor Vehicles checks to make sure that you have car insurance. The Department of Motor Vehicles doesn't keep copies of the maintenance records, oil changes, refueling, car washes, and tune-ups. The IRS is like the DMV - they will check to make sure that you have insurance, they shouldn't have your health records. This is over the line.

I would hope your wouldn't actually want that. The most charitable thing you can say at the moment is that they apparently have more power than they can manage is a responsible way, let along legal way.

You make it sound like the IRS violated some law, they were issued a warrant that allowed them to image the drive on that computer, and there happened to be medical records on there. Just because there are medical records on the machine does not mean that the IRS has no right to the other data on there, but because they imaged the drive they got all of it.

What you're suggesting is tantamount to the police searching a house for allegedly doing cockfights in the basement and being required to ignore anything

The article doesn't state it, but it looks like they probably imaged the entire HDD, which is normal, and that resulted in them having copies of all those medical records. And because the records themselves were not properly stored the IRS now has access to them.

Sounds to me more like the firm is concerned with covering their own asses for not having properly secured the data in the first place. Laptops have a tendency to be stolen or otherwise walk off, and if they lost the records that easily, I'd want to change insurers.

This wasn't a laptop, this was servers. Probably a pretty substantial setup too. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a cluster of big RISC boxes with a substantial SAN. Where you are thinking, "HDD," think disk storage array, a big one.

Sounds to me more like the firm is concerned with covering their own asses for not having properly secured the data in the first place.

It is clearly indicated the agents went outside what was in the warrant, were warned about it, and took the data anyway - just to get some financial data on one former employee. I would normally expect you to be outraged about this sort of thing, violated warrant, government overreach and all.

The US Government needs to get the problems at that agency fixed, now. Between this and the suppression of political groups going on [thedailybeast.com], this is intollerable and undemocratic. What did Franklin say? A Republic, if you can keep it?

The US Government needs to get the problems at that agency fixed, now.

What problem? The issues you are referring to are features of the IRS that led to it being chosen for its role as the key enforcer of the Affordable Care Act, not bugs that would lead those who passed that law to consider it unwise to give it that additional power.

Sadly, the guys who idolize President Obama don't care about this story, or the many others. To them, it's just the conservatives/GOP showing their hatred of the first black president, nothing more.

So, I've given up hope that they will see the light of what this administration is like. They'll keep voting for guys like him, who will bring this country down very soon. There is no avoiding that fate. I'm not clamoring for revolution, but I think a civil war is coming.

It's not about Republican versus Democrat. Everywhere it counts they are the same. When it comes to fucking over the country they are bipartisan. They differ only on peripheral issues that, while important to the public, are irrelevant to the things which really matter to those who rule. Things like abortion, religion, racism, affirmative action, and gay marriage are just hot button issues used to divide the public so that the elite can rule us better. As long as we're hating each other over things that don't matter to our rulers then it's all good. You can give up though, it's hopeless. Every single time I pointed out how bad GW Bush was all any of his supporters had to say was "he's not as bad as those evil Democrats" and when I point out the fallacies of the Obama administration all I get is "at least he's better than those evil neo-cons!" People have their side and they are oblivious to anything other than how bad the other side is.

That's not true. Bush got over 5 years before the media stopped kissing his ass after 9/11. Clinton spent most of his Presidency explaining as the press dug into things which weren't reasonable related to Presidency.

Face it, the media sucks up to the GOP because if they don't, the GOP cries about the "liberal" media, never mind that the media itself is already right of center.

Because in the REST of the word those things you listed are NORMAL EXPECTATIONS of government, they don't count as being "left". The last true "Left" discussion in the USA was between the 1890 depression and the 1930 depression... At least we got National Parks out of the deal.

It would have meant health care rates would have fallen after the GOP voted in the health care reforms they were asking for, like caps on malpractice and allowing insurance to be sold across state lines.

The GOP had 8 years to pass health care reform under Bush. You don't really believe they would have passed anything, do you? You're not that much of a sucker, are you?

BTW, if you cap malpractice, who pays for the health care of someone who was injured by malpractice? If the slip of a knife causes someone to require tens of thousands of dollars of health care, where is that going to come from? This wouldn't be a problem under single payer, btw. What's the conservative solution? Let the market sort it out?

Are you stupid enough to believe that Republicans wouldn't use "a $20million suit to punish a nurse for cracking ribs while providing CPR" as an excuse to indemnify doctors against all their wrongs? They have proven that they will deregulate everything, no matter who it hurts, just for the sake of deregulation.

He stated the law was irrelevant in judging whether the actions were wrong or not. Illegal? Actions wrong. Legal? Actions wrong. He also said, “The activity was outrageous and inexcusable, and it was stopped and it needs to be fixed to ensure it never happens again.”

This is in reference to the IRS actions regarding Tea Party organizations' tax-exempt applications, not the healthcare record story. The 501C4 imbroglio is what Coward referred to in comment about Pfeiffer's "the law is irrelevant" remark.

If it takes that level of psychopathy and money and criminal activity in order to successfully fight against the IRS, what odds does a company with legitimate meritorious claims against the IRS have? None?:>(

Thanks for that link. I had not read that. Of course I understand that out of many audits of personal situations, there must be more than zero individuals who have won against the IRS, so I did not mean that individuals have not won against the IRS. But I was under the mistaken impression that the IRS always won again large groups and institutions. I can't find the link from the Union-Tribune (San Diego) that I read. I think it was about two years ago. But considering that your link is from 2009, that

Bob, we don't target people for tax audits and third-degree checks on the singular basis of the words with which they choose to identify their group. To argue otherwise is to open the door to some of the greatest evils in mankind's history.

They had a search warrant for financial data regarding one former employee, and they took tens of millions of medical records too, which they weren't entitled to.

Warrant said they could take A, they took A and B.....ZZZZZZZZ. Everything from B on was unrelated information to the investigation proper, and not covered by the warrant. They stepped over the line, despite being warned. How is this confusing to you?

...they took tens of millions of medical records too, which they weren't entitled to...

Actually, from RTFA, it appears they were entitled to them. From the article:

...defendants [IRS thugs] threatened to ‘rip’ the servers containing the medical data out of the building if IT personnel would not voluntarily hand them over,” the complaint states...

By giving them the servers, the IT personnel effectively waived the fourth amendment protection. As painful as it might have been to watch, the IT personnel should have said "NO! I do not consent to you taking the servers." rather than hand them over. If the IRS thugs then did rip them out, now you have a fourth amendment violation.

Substitute storage array and you might be right. From what I've read, it almost certainly wasn't a trivial amount of data as it included treatment plans, history, etc.. Since it was for a former employee, you have to wonder why they couldn't either just ask for a report to be printed, or something else. It is very hard to believe that this isn't a massive over-reach.

Substitute storage array and you might be right. From what I've read, it almost certainly wasn't a trivial amount of data as it included treatment plans, history, etc.. Since it was for a former employee, you have to wonder why they couldn't either just ask for a report to be printed, or something else. It is very hard to believe that this isn't a massive over-reach.

I don't know about that. Right now all we have is the plaintiff's word for it that proper protocols weren't followed. They admit there was a warrant.

Let's get some facts before we jump to conclusions. If we have a story everytime someone cries foul, there won't be enough bandwidth for anything else.

Now if someone gets convicted, or slapped with a zillion dollar fine, then we'll have a story.

It appears that the IRS had a legitimate search warrant. if the data had been appropriately encrypted, it would be impossible tor the IRS to get access to it without help. If they were shown to have got that help, then they would have been clearly in violation. As it is, the company is at least as much to blame, surely?

The data was handed over after the IRS threatened to rip the servers out. A move like that can seriously impact a business. The did what they felt they had to do and decided to let the courts sort it out.

You clearly have no idea how such systems work. My guess is that the IRS served their warrant and then demanded read only ODBC/API access to the companies systems. The company's DBAs likely balked at the idea... I know I would... and said "listen, if you have that sort of access, you could violate Hipaa if you submit the wrong query. We're very stringent on what we allow to be run against our tables" But the IRS being the IRS said "Fuck you, we're the IRS" and went right ahead. Once you have a legit login and password the data is no longer encrypted for you.

Knowing the ramifications of what the IRS were doing, the company likely logged their queries. The IRS's DBAs likely were worried the company in question could potentially get a court injunction to stop their access so their first query was likely "Select * from customers;" and dumped the entire table to a local table. Then company in question likely saw this, freaked out, but realized any lawsuit they filed would likely be quashed by "We have an ongoing investigation" yada yada... so they kept quiet about it until the original case was over.

I'm just guessing but I've been in similar situations and the governments admins are pricks and usually don't have a clue what they are doing. Violating hipaa is VERY easy to do if you don't know what you're doing. So much so that many people don't even want to work in departments that have access to such information. Make a typo in your query and you're getting walked out the door.

Thanks for an enlightening reply. I guess I was assuming the data would be nicely segmented, but I guess these days it's all run together. Raises some interesting questions for lawyers and DBAs to get their teeth into.

When everyone kept their mouths shut when the Warrantless Wiretapping was approved, did you expect it to stop there? Benjamin Franklin's quote about temporary safety fell upon deaf ears in the U.S. We are now the police state plutocracy we've always wanted. Good luck getting your privacy back.

I agree, name another government entity that the vast majority of citizens are frightened of because you are forced to deal with them anywhere from quarterly to yearly, and if you make a single mistake they will come in and chew your ass up and spit you out with everything you own stripped from your hands.

I'm not scared of the IRS and I'm pretty sure, FWIW, that if I did make a single mistake on a tax return they would (a) be unlikely to notice, and (b) if they did notice they'd refund me the difference (or if the error means I owe more taxes, require I pay the difference, with interest. Either way, I end up paying what I should have done to begin with.)

I seriously doubt that the number of people terrified of the IRS is particularly large. I know there are a lot of irresponsible tax evaders who want all the benefits of civilization with none of the duties it entails who hate the IRS, but that's rather different.

I don't know whether to agree with you or disagree with you so I'll just tell a story that happened to me instead.

I'm American, but my wife is not a U.S. citizen. We'd been living in the U.S. for years -- her with a green card paying her taxes every year on a business she ran in America. Uncle Sam loved us and we never had any problems. Circumstances changed and last year we decided to move to Germany -- her home country. In preparation, we called up the IRS and asked them what we needed to do. We went

First of all, TFA is at The Washington Times. That alone makes its credibility dubious. The Washington Times was founded by Sun Myung Moon [wikipedia.org] (crazy "Unification Church" cult leader) who stated that the purpose of the "newspaper" was to be "the instrument in spreading the truth about God to the world." Moon was convicted that same year of filing false federal income tax returns and conspiracy and served 13 months in prison. The Times has long been known as a conservative shill (although it has a decent sports section) that had to be financially supported by Moon's "church" to survive. Moon spent nearly $2 billion of his followers' money over 20 years to keep the paper afloat.

Second, The Washington Times article doesn't even claim to have done any reporting on its own... it cites some article from UPI that isn't readily available on UPI's home page or even by searching UPI for "IRS." Ultimately found the "article" here [upi.com]. It's a 9-paragraph blog posting. UPI was once a respectable news agency like AP or Reuters, but its relevance diminished to the point where it was bought out in 2000 [wikipedia.org] by... you guessed it: Sun Myung Moon. UPI's White House correspondent retired the next day after 57 years with the organization. These days UPI doesn't even have a White House correspondent, and its finances have gotten so bad that it relies on free articles contributed by college students.

The UPI blog posting cites a Courthouse News Service article [courthousenews.com]: John Doe Company sued 15 John Doe IRS agents in Superior Court. The plaintiff's attorney alleges that the records affected may include those of "politically controversial members of the Screen Actors Guild and the Directors Guild, and prominent citizens in the world of entertainment, business and government, from all walks of life." He goes on to complain that the unnamed IRS agents "decided to use John Doe Company's media system to watch basketball, ordering pizza and Coca-Cola, to take in part of the NCAA tournament," but "Plaintiff's attorney Robert E. Barnes declined to elaborate on the complaint's allegations, saying he will have more information 'in a few months.'"

Why publish a story no one can verify, since all you can say for now is that that unnamed people at the IRS are illegally snooping on unnamed politically controversial people through an unnamed medical firm? Because it helps fuel the fire driving the current Republican party line of "the IRS is evil and Obama is responsible." Because some ignorant blogger might pick it up and run with it, thinking that The Washington Times and UPI are real news organizations, and not even bother to look for the source of this story. Great job Timothy.

The fact that there was a court case filed on this topic is not much of a news story. If you went through court filings, you can find any number of bizarre and conspiratorial lawsuits filed against the government everyday, all over the place.

The real mystery is how a run-of-the-mill everyday nutcase filing gets to the front page of Slashdot. The answer to that has everything to do with the Washington Times, and guttentag's comment.

Yep. Which means the only real solution, and deterrent, is to place personal responsibility upon those who ordered and implemented these activities. Start firing people and taking away their cushy government pensions and benefits, instead of letting them resign into comfy retirement, and you'll start seeing change.

ATF has been the classic "jackbooted thugs" for most of their existence - ever since they got spun out of Internal Revenue in . They're "the revenuers" that enforced alcohol taxes with machine guns even before they and the FBI burned down a church camp in Waco over a $200 tax bill and shot a man's son and wife on Ruby Ridge over a $500 claim, inspiring the original NRA "Jackbooted T

Spun out of Internal Revenue in 1886.Shot and killed the son and sniped and killed the (nursing at the time) wife over a FIVE dollar tax matter, not a five hundred buck bill.

(ATF is also noted for throwing a pregnant woman against a wall - she later miscarried - and stomping a kitten to death just to drive home how powerless a raid target was to make them responsible for their actions. Shooting the family dogs at the start of a raid, for the raiders' convenience, is routine.)